When astronomers have no idea how something happened they invoke just right collisions that just happen to do the job.
The number of just right collisions to give us the solar system we see defies common sense. It’s like playing billiards and with one shot having all the balls sink in pockets in numerical order.
It would be like that if all the planets had identical tilt, maybe. But the solar system is a hodgepodge of different tilts.
No.
It is more like recreating a billiards shot. Any shot.
If you assume the starting position of the balls in the rack, hit them with the cue ball, and end up with a final position.
What they are doing is coming up with one (out of many) possible ways that the balls could have gotten from the starting position to the end position.
Since they do not have all the facts - such as actual starting position - or other large cue balls in play - their resulting scenario will be wildly off from what actually happened.
However, by making an initial guess, by putting the first straw man into the ground, that idea can be tested and thought about.
Then new and different models can be developed as research and facts provide the missing information that made the first model erroneous.
The only (nearly) certain information they have is the current location, size and motion of the existing planets, moons, dwarf planets, some of the asteroids and meteors.
No.
It is more like recreating a billiards shot. Any shot.
If you assume the starting position of the balls in the rack, hit them with the cue ball, and end up with a final position.
What they are doing is coming up with one (out of many) possible ways that the balls could have gotten from the starting position to the end position.
Since they do not have all the facts - such as actual starting position - or other large cue balls in play - their resulting scenario will be wildly off from what actually happened.
However, by making an initial guess, by putting the first straw man into the ground, that idea can be tested and thought about.
Then new and different models can be developed as research and facts provide the missing information that made the first model erroneous.
The only (nearly) certain information they have is the current location, size and motion of the existing planets, moons, dwarf planets, some of the asteroids and meteors.